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Ken (teacher)
Ken is a male High School Teacher. Autobio "When I was twelve years old, a friend and I started a bicycle shop in his dads garage in North Carolina. Pulling bikes apart and trying again and again to get them back together provided me with a rewarding and exciting self-directed project that was unlike anything being supported by my school. I could not have guessed at the time that this exploration would carry me through nearly two decades of working in bicycle shops, designing maintenance classes, and helping kids learn about bicycles. Facilitating after school and vocational education programs for Portland Community College, the Community Cycling Center, Outside In, and the Portland Yellow Bike Program allowed me to explore my desire to help others learn about the world in front of them. Desiring to continue my development as a teacher, and broaden my horizons as a learner, I returned to college in 1996, starting at Portland Community College and later graduating from Portland State University. During this time, I studied ceramics, welding, and Spanish, finally finding my greatest interest in the study of world history. I came to appreciate how the study of history provides a platform from which to explore the social parameters within which societies agree to live. A social studies classroom has the potential to create engaging, relevant, and meaningful discussions about the process of history and its connection to the role of the individual in the present and in the future. When I returned to public education as a teacher, it was with a sense of what is fundamentally important about learning that the purpose of education is to create life-long learners. The classroom should be a place where students are encouraged to think critically when given the boundaries and support in which to do so. And, like my days in that garage in North Carolina a students need to become active participants in their learning in order to make it meaningful. Lasting learning is based upon the ability to connect seemingly abstract ideas to real world experience. My responsibility as a teacher is to help forge links between students personal lives and the concepts introduced in the classroom. I have always been an active and curious learner. Today, as a facilitator of learning, I am a strong advocate of alternative schools as a solution to many of the problems faced by larger public schools today. I believe that the smaller, more intimate structure of Trillium fosters a responsive and caring community of teachers, students, and their parents. The emphasis on self-directed learning provides a network of support for students to explore and develop their own areas of interest. School should be a place where we can have heated discussions about the past, explore ideas that fascinate us in the present, and be encouraged to take ownership of our learning, digging our hands in, when necessary, and getting greasy."http://trilliumcharterschool.org/staff/high-school-staff/ Ken also teaches Tai Chi, juggling, slacklining and snowboarding in his Mindful movement class. References Category:High School Advisors Category:Teachers Category:Males Category:Social Studies Teachers